Could this implant protect women from HIV?

Researchers in Canada have developed a vaginal implant that aims to protect women from becoming diagnosed with HIV.

Have scientists found a new way to protect women from HIV?

In a paper now published in the Journal of Controlled Release, they report how they successfully tested the vaginal implant in laboratory animals.

HIV, which is the virus that causes AIDS, hijacks activated immune T cells to use their machinery to complete its life cycle — that is, to produce copies of itself and spread. A major site of transmission is in the female genital tract.

The new vaginal implant slowly releases drugs that keep the T cells of the female genital tract in a resting, or "quiescent," state, which is much less productive for the virus.

Unlike activated T cells, quiescent T cells block the early stage of the HIV life cycle, "resulting in a largely inefficient [transmission]."

Some sex workers 'naturally immune' to HIV

Senior study author Emmanuel Ho, who is a professor in the School of Pharmacy at the University of Waterloo in Canada, and colleagues came up with the idea of a vaginal anti-HIV implant after studying sex workers in Kenya, East Africa.

There, they observed that many female sex workers did not become HIV-positive, even though they were having sex with clients who were.